A Wayne County man is now facing four charges for Endangering the Welfare of a Child after he interrupted an act of vandalism at a home he was renovating for his father-in-law.

…The incident unfolded around 9 p.m. Saturday when Jesse Daniels said he told his wife to call 911 after he heard loud noises coming from the home next door and saw an individual striking a wall with a hammer.

Daniels tells 13WHAM News he ran next door and found four children, ages eight and ten, doing damage to the property. Daniels said he took a hammer from one of the kids and corralled them into a closet while he waited for police to arrive. Daniels estimated that the damage to his father-in-law’s property exceeds $40,000.

Clyde Village Police took the children back to their parents and filed felony criminal charges of Burglary 2nd Degree and Criminal Mischief 2nd Degree. Those cases will be handled in Family Court and the results of each case is likely to remain sealed.

On Monday police returned to Daniels’ home and arrested him on four counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child.

The parents of the children insisted on the charges according to authorities. They claim that their children were shoved into the closet, that one was grabbed around the neck, and that Daniels’ threatened them with the hammer.

Daniels was arraigned on those charges and is due back in court later this month. The maximum sentence on each charge is one year in county jail.

Wayne County District Attorney Richard Healy tells 13WHAM News that the entire incident is still under investigation and he is still gathering information. While Healy can decide not to prosecute he said he does not have enough information at this time to make that decision.

…Paul Bowler lives not far from Daniels’ home and the home that was vandalized and he made no excuses for the actions of his boys and their two alleged accomplices when 13WHAM News confronted him.

“No not at all there’s no excuses to be made,” explained Bowler. “I understand they were in the wrong but there are other ways to handle it. He (Daniels) knew who the kids were it’s not like they were strangers and send the kids home and call the cops then. You don’t sit there and torment them and tell them you’re going to bash their skulls in with a hammer.”

Bowler said his two boys are traumatized by the incident and their mother showed 13WHAM News a picture of the incident that she says one of them drew. Bowler also provided 13WHAM News with a photo of the neck of one of his boys because he said Daniels grabbed his son by the neck and left a mark.

Wow, wonder how Paul Bowler’s punk kids went so wrong? “Oooh, the bad man scared my boys when he caught them smashing up his house with a hammer! He should go to jail for that!”

Wrong answer.

Criminals don’t get to play the martyr. Furthermore, criminals are by definition, untrustworthy. So when a homeowner says one thing and a criminal says another, barring incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the homeowner’s version should be treated as correct. In a case when none of these kids even had a trip to the hospital, the idea that Jesse Daniels could face any kind of legal repercussions is insane.